


Waiting For Love

by craftingdead



Series: charlie will make cd a common tag if it kills them [22]
Category: The Crafting Dead
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Child Neglect, EDIT: i messed around w/ chap two, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Character Death, Multi, so it could fit changing hcs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2019-11-01 18:31:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17872562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/craftingdead/pseuds/craftingdead
Summary: Sky's always hated guns. They were too loud, too annoying, were too hard to handle. Whenever his friends would drag him into the woods to shoot at glass bottles they propped up on the ground, he was always worried that some type of law enforcement would come and bust them at any minute. As he got older, that fear and hatred dissipated when it needed to. Now, all he needs is the barrel of a gun to keep him company throughout the tough times.He fumbles with the safety and trigger and accidentally blows a hole into everyone who cares about him.(Nine stories from Sky and nine different people who've impacted his life up until this point.)





	1. monday left me broken

**Author's Note:**

> the title (and respective chapter titles) all from from avicii's [waiting for love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ncIVUXZla8). 
> 
> i miss sky and i really like him so i wrote this to work out my feelings. poor dude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sky's mother is an angel, a Godsend, and he loves her with his entire heart. She takes care of him and houses help and rocks him to sleep when he is young and takes care of him as she chooses to. Her wings are the color of their shared eyes and they shine brightly throughout his childhood and well into his adult years.

His mom is an angel. A Godsend from above—sent down to take care of him. Even though he doesn’t believe in gods or angels or demons, he likes telling the other kids at school that. Erin, the Christian boy who sits next to him says, excitedly, that it’s because she’s an actual angel and that he came in contact with an actual angel. Sky calls it bullshit and gets sent out of class and then to the principal's office for swearing. He is six.

When he is seven, he breaks his wrist playing soccer with some boys from school. One of them grabs him too hard and shoves him to the ground and his arm was bent awkwardly in the crossfire and resulted in his wrist slamming into the chain link fence bordering the field and cracking loudly.

He doesn’t wail or cry; instead, he sits there, mouth open in a wide O of surprise as the other boys panic. One of them runs to their house (two, three blocks away) to grab his parents to try and help. Sky is pretty sure his knee is bleeding, too, but he hadn’t been paying attention because suddenly his wrist could move in ways and directions it couldn’t before.

“Does it hurt?” his friend, Sam, asks, wandering up to him. The other boys are too scared to approach him so they don’t.

“Nah,” he breathes, bending it back with a finger. Suddenly a rush of pain struck up his arm and he cries out. “Actually, yeah, yeah it does, it hurts a lot and it hurts more than anything I’ve ever felt before. But I’m not crying because I’m a big kid.”

“Wow,” Sam says, and squats down next to him. “My older brother broke his arm six months ago. He kept going on and on about how it ‘hurt like a bitch.’ I don’t know what that word means, but Mommy kept yelling at him for saying it in front of me. I think it’s a bad word. Like ‘crap’ is. Or ‘darn’ and ‘dang’ is.”

One of the other boys shuffles uncomfortably in place, then says, “Bitch is a bad word. My dad says it sometimes so that’s why I know I’m not allowed to say it.”

“If ‘darn,’ ‘dang,’ and ‘crap’ are bad words, then why are you saying them?” Sky asks, rocking back and forth with his wrist cradled in his lap. The pain was getting, like, really, really bad and tears were pricking at his eyes. But his eyes were too dry from playing in the sun so he didn’t cry full-on, just gathered uncomfortable tears where there should’ve been wetness before but wasn’t because it was too dry to wet his eyes. More than usual, that is, because he was pretty sure eyes were always wet in some way.

Sam smiles creepily. “If ‘darn,’ ‘dang’ and ‘crap’ are bad words, then why are _you_ saying them?” he says and Sky ponders on that before shrugging.

The kid who ran to find his parents come back and they freak out and call Sky’s mom. She arrives, picks him up, carries him to the car, and they drive to the hospital. He’s in there for one day and has to get something called a “brace” put on his wrist. It itches really bad.

“Mom,” he whispers to her as she tucks him into bed. They got back from the hospital hours earlier and ordered pizza. He had to eat with his non-dominant hand.

“Yes?” she says, pulling the blanket up to his chin. She allowed him to take the brace off while he sleeps then gave him some pain medicine to help regulate said pain. It doesn’t hurt as bad as before but that’s probably from the medicine.

“Why are dangit and darn bad words?”

She takes a seat on his bed, dipping it down low a tiny bit, rolling his wrist, and thinks about it for a second. “Well, they aren’t technically ‘bad’ words, but they’re bad words to you since you’re younger—so you can’t say them, either. I can say them when, say, I’m really upset at something. Like my favorite character dying. But that’s because I’m angry. It’s like hitting something when you’re angry, but a little less harmful.”

“Why am I too young to say those words?”

“It’s like how you can’t work-out in the normal gym, and instead have to go to the little kiddies one further in the back. You’re not mature enough to understand what those words mean! But, trust me, in a year you will be able to say them. My mom let me say them when I was eight, and so I’ll allow you, too.”

“That makes sense,” he says and turns on his side. Then, he adds again, “Mom?”

“Yes?” she responds, again.

“You mentioned your favorite character dying?”

“Yes, I did. I get mad at that sometimes."

“What happens when _you_ die?”

“Oh, honey, why are you thinking about that.” His mother shifts around to face him fully with a surprised expression on her face. “You shouldn’t be thinking about that. I won’t be going anywhere for a very, very long time. Not even in the next forty years! Do you know how long that is? It’s more than four-times your age!” She pokes Sky in the stomach and he giggles.

“I know,” he says, “but I guess I was nervous. The hospital scared me. It was too bright and smelled bad. Other kids and babies kept on screaming and crying and I guess it freaked me out. Promise you won’t go anywhere for the next forty years? Or more?”

“Hospitals are scary, but you got to leave it quicker than some others, so you should be grateful for that. And, yes, I promise—I swear on my, ha, life—that for at least the next forty years, I will not be going anywhere. If I don’t, I owe you forty boxes of pizza. Imagine that, forty boxes of pizza. That’s more than four-times your current age. Say, how would you like it if I slept in your bed tonight, with you? Would that help calm your nerves?”

Sky gasps. “Slumber party,” he whispers, in awe, and his mom laughs.

“Yes, slumber party.” And she kicks off her shoes (old, beat up tennis ones that she threw on last minute to drive to get to her son in place of her usual heels. She’d forgotten to take them off) and climbs in with him, still in her work clothes. They fall asleep next to each other and eat pizza for breakfast the next morning.

Four years later, when he’s twelve, Sky looks back on that conversation and groans. He would bring it up to his mom but they’d just get into arguments on which characters deserved to die or not. This time he knew his mom wouldn’t die until she was like, ninety or something, with the average age of death going higher and higher as the years continued. Ironic, since their governments were going to hell.

He’d developed the same morbid sense of humor as his mom and, if he ever saw an angel, he’d shoot it. Right between the eyes, he said. Bang bang, they’re dead. Or maybe clip their wings. His friend, still Sam, laughed as the Christian kid (a different one) looked over in horror. It was funny, seeing their bewildered expressions.

(Years later, he would regret pestering them about it all the time, the First Amendment blah blah. But, right then, he thought it was funny and was kind of a dickish twelve-year-old. Probably got it from his mom who was also, apparently, a dickish twelve year old.)

Ten years after that, he uses a .22 caliber pistol to shoot an angel right between the eyes.

She’s lumbering towards him with blood trailing down her face—from him trying to stop her with a well-placed hit to the head with a chair—and he can’t seem to pull the pistol. Please, he begs to himself, hands shaking as he stumbles further and further away from her. Please.

It doesn’t help. She continues coming at him. He side-steps and she runs into the table and grunts the best a zombie can grunt without spewing blood everywhere. He didn’t know when she turned—did she get bit and not tell him? Did she not know she got bit? Did some zombie break-in and bite her while she was sleeping? She steadies and lunges at him.

“Please!” he cries out and pulls the trigger.

She stops in her path. Twitches once, twice, then falls to the ground, a bullet through her head and embedded somewhere in her skull. Sky doesn’t know. There’s no way he could know. He lets the pistol drop from his hand then falls to his knees, gasping for air.

Fuck. Shit. Fuck shit fuck shit _fuck shit fuck shit_ —he really did it. He killed someone. He’d—he’d shot walkers before, of course, he had, but this was different. Personal, up close. If Barney had been there he would’ve done it for him. Or not. Maybe he would be more freaked out than Sky was. But the thing at the end of the day was how he shot an innocent woman through the head. Yeah, sure, she could’ve been trying to kill him, but she could have also been trying to get help.

He tries to convince himself of that as she convulses on the ground and then goes still for good, eyes wide open to the ceiling and blood seeping from the bullet wound in her skull. She landed on her side. God, he wishes she hadn’t.

Sky crawls over to her side and looks down. Her eyes—a bright gold—seem to get duller as he stares down at her. It twists in his gut so he falls down, mouth wide open in an O, hand fisted in his hair.

“Holy shit, you fucking killed someone,” he breathes out. “You killed someone. You pointed a gun at someone and killed them. Fuck, I think my ears are still ringing. Holy shit. Holy shit. Where’s Barney, holy shit, I can’t believe this—”

His gun is still on the floor, six feet to his side. He could lean over and grab it easily but he doesn’t. The woman on the ground is still dead as she was when he crawled over to her. Zombies suck ass but, for once, he wishes she would get back up and say “just kidding!” like she always used to pretend whenever he messed up and thought he hurt her. Looking back, it was kind of mean, but it made him cackle like a hyena whenever she did it.

He starts to tear up and props her head in his lap. Blood is soaking into his jeans but he doesn’t care. Carefully, he leans down and shuts her eyes. She looks much more peaceful like this. Like she hadn’t been trying to kill someone moments before her death.

Sky feels like he’s de-aged fourteen years. Like he’s that kid in his bed again, wondering what would happen when his mother died. Now that he knew, it didn’t feel like a looming cloud on the horizon anymore. Now it was a gruesome reality he laid propped up in his lap.

“Mom?” he whispers, like a secret. No one answers. The house is devilishly silent. He wants to try again but that would get him nowhere because his mother is dead. She was the first one he lost in the crossfire (he thinks. He prays).

Natalia Cielo dies on a dark Saturday, the sun rising in the sky as her son shoots her almost point-blank with a .22 caliber pistol.

He sits on the dusty wooden floor, blood staining through, and tries to imagine how an angel would feel with their wings clipped and a hole between their two eyes. If angels had two eyes. Was this revenge for harassing that Christian kid? He’s never believed in gods or angels.

But he does believe in murderers. And he sits criss-cross on the floor with blood spilling across his hands like feathery veins of wings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~MONDAY~~  
>  TUESDAY  
> WEDNESDAY  
> THURSDAY  
> FRIDAY  
> SATURDAY  
> SUNDAY  
> LOVE  
> LIFE


	2. tuesday i was through with hopin'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His dad reminded him of an old guitar. The paint flaking, the strings aching, but reliable in the end. But there's a time where you need to take a look at an old guitar and go, "Okay. This needs some fixing up."

His dad is one wrong call off from being completely removed from his life. That’s not true, his dad loves him and would most definitely bring the case to court if he had to, but it always worried Sky. Not seeing his dad, that is.

Sky... doesn't see his dad much, in general. He was an old friend of his mom's, and then fucked once and—boom! Sky was there. He lived in a house with a close childhood friend of his—Isaak, the dude's name was—and Sky had started calling him "Uncle Isaak" before he could comprehend what that meant. He eventually separated Isaak from the rest of his family once... once he stopped seeing the man as much, but he was still pretty damn close to Sky. Isaak was a cool family friend. His girlfriend-slash-best friend was cool as well—her name was Anika—and she spent as much time in the house as any of them did.

His dad wasn't as big of a fan of Anika. Or Isaak. Or anyone, the older he got. But they were still friends, Sky thought. His dad still appreciated them in the same way he appreciated Natalia—not enemies, but still friends. Not family, but still friends. The only reason Sky kept in touch with Isaak was because of that phrase: "but still friends." It was burned into his mind practically; "but still friends."

He didn't move around at all. Just a few times, out of Isaak's house and into his own, and then to his father's, and then to another of his own. Sky was pretty sure the only reason he kept moving was because he was the same as Sky: restless. Couldn't keep still.

Sky kept in touch with Isaak throughout it all—the dude was cool. Sky sometimes snuck over on school nights when he was bored. Lied to his dad about studying then went over for cookies and R-rated movies because Isaak could care less about what he watched.

He talks to him about whatever’s going on in the movie and Sky’s pretty sure that’s where he got the same habit from. Whispered commentary as Anika snores away on his lap. He reaches over to poke her on the nose, but Isaak stops him short.

“Don’t wake her, she’s like a cat,” he whispers.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that if she’s startled, I’m gonna get scratched.”

She was always quite different from his mom—or most women he knew in his life. Wide-eyed and looking like she didn’t belong properly. And he was pretty sure she and Isaak weren’t ever even “in love”—just friends and pretty content to be.

Isaak's hair was a bright, curly red. His eyes were a pale green. Skin light and freckled. Sky always felt weird looking at him—mostly because of how different he looked from his own parents; they had brown and tan skin, dark hair, dark eyes—other than Sky, with his own yellowish ones. His dad always called it "amber," and made jokes about how he looked more like his mother than he did he dear old dad.

On the contrast, Anika was different. Her hair was a dark brown, eyes amber (close to his eye color!) and her skin a light brown. Isaak always wore earthier colors like green and brown while she was in red and yellow. They stood out in a room—Isaak with how loud he was, Anika with how bright she was, especially with that one red scarf he had gotten her for her birthday, and Sky always heard them coming when waiting hand-in-hand with mom at his school gates. When he used to, anyway.

But Sky has always looked more like his dad. Despite the jokes he made, Sky inherited his hair, his skin, his shoulders, his temper—everything. He was a mama's boy, but he sure as hell looked like his dad. Sky got his mom in the little things—his nose, ears, eye shape, color, the way his body was more long and lanky compared to his dad's more shorter and stockier frame, her long fingers, all that stuff.

But no matter what, people never stopped to mention how much he looked like his dad. It started pissing him off—pissing him off that some times, he would joke about Isaak was his father instead, so people could mention how he looked like his mom at least _once._

His dad's house was always lonely, but Isaak's wasn't. The most prominent times he could remember, it never was

Their house was all brown and bricks. A large fireplace in the middle of their living room with a TV hanging haphazardly above it, a kitchen without a island, instead a small table shoved into the middle, and warm lights illuminating everything that flickers from time to time. The rooms were cluttered and tight and the staircase paint was peeling and in the corner of the house, a computer was propped up on a desk and it was most definitely the most homely place Sky had ever been too. And continued to be, through his life. His dad always kept a guitar propped near the door and played it on rainy nights.

Compared to his mom’s modernistic home with stark lights and blue walls, and the moving boxes constantly scattered around his dad's, it was like the gooey chocolate chip cookies she used to make back when she lived there. Sky misses them more than he likes to admit.

Eventually, Isaak got a family of his own. Two girls—or so they thought—twins, looking more like Anika then him.

The first few years of their life, Sky stopped visiting Isaak as much. He stopped calling him over as much as well. Sky stayed with his dad and ignored the tugging in the back of his mind.

Then Isaak had two little kids and Anika visiting on Christmas and Sky realizes that the man who acted more fatherly to him than his own dad may not be as cut out for parenthood as he might've believed.

But Sky was never too close to his Isaak or his dad. He was gone half the year, and most of his friends were back on the mainland. Anika stopped showing up as much and eventually came only a few times a year, from wherever she called home. It was like watching a candle burn down.

_His work is pulling him away from his family,_ Sky realizes late one night.

Once, when he was sixteen, he got into a really bad fight. He dragged himself home and patched himself up and his dad didn’t show up until the next day and even then didn’t notice the bruises until a day after. There was no yelling. There was no argument. There was only Isaak shaking his head sadly and asking if he needed any medical stuff from the store or a hospital while his father walked right past him. Sky said no.

When Sky turns seventeen, he decides he’s going to bring his dad back. Takes a boat over earlier than usual with his boyfriend, and storms into the house demanding for a “week with the family.” Then he drags his dad out to lunch and dumps Barney with Isaak so he can at least learn friendship from someone in Seaport.

Unsurprisingly, when he informs his dad of his life, he’s surprised. Asks about a few things. Mentions college. Sky lies and says he’s going. His dad lies and says his work is fine. He can only imagine what his dad is like twenty-four-seven and is even more determined to make this family work.

They return back home to find Barney in tears and Isaak's twins nowhere to be found. They also stole his wallet.

Sky watches the twins grow up—only a few years younger than him. The girl, Shelby, is brutish and loud and laughs herself to sleep. The other girl—wait, no, the boy, Nick, is quiet and kind and runs inside to get his sister bandages when she falls out of a tree.

Isaak's parenting shines through and through. They start to grow apart from their dad. Sky thinks about his own, and how he patched their relationship pack with tears and fury, and feels dread pool in his stomach.

And then, when Sky is eighteen, something terrible happens. He doesn’t know it happened until an hour after. His dad wakes him up with feverish knocking and when he races downstairs and finds out he watches his dad get his heart ripped out and shoved back in, beating feverish.

“Did you know that this could happen?” he asks.

“No,” his dad says and, for the first time ever, Sky sees him cry. “No, no, I never knew this would ever happen. Jesus. Fuck.”

Isaak stops neglecting his children after that. He comes over a few times and cries into his dad's shoulder for a few hours, and Sky finally sees him start to change from his shitty dadness.

It only took one horribly traumatic event for it to happen, unfortunately.

(He finds the man a few days later. Out behind a store with a couple of friends with him. The man’s a douche, smoking and blowing the smoke into his buddies faces. The man’s twenty-two, only two years older than Sky himself. The man worked as a teacher’s assistant at the local high school. He wants to put him in a hospital. He considers putting him in a hospital. He settles for breaking his nose. His dad sees the blood on his knuckles and says nothing.)

Nineteen. Barely. He wakes up to his phone ringing in the middle of the night. It’s Isaak. “Nick’s having night terrors again, what was the thing you did to help?” he asks, and he sounds utterly exhausted, and Sky only feels half bad for him being shocked into becoming a better parent.

“Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself. It’ll settle down in a few minutes. Try to wake him up afterward,” he says, because it’s routine—he’d only done it for two months straight. “I thought the meds were supposed to help?”

“They were,” Isaak says, “but apparently they’re not working good enough. I’ll call the doctor about upping the dosage if this continues. Thank you.”

“Is Shelby awake?”

“No, she started wearing headphones to sleep. I think she feels guilty that she can’t help further.”

“Do you need me to come over for another month?”

“No, you should stay with your mom and boyfriend. We’ll be fine over here.”

“Alright.” Sky hangs up, rolls over, and doesn’t fall asleep for the rest of the night.

He misses the kids. He stayed over for months after the incident—helping them heal. Helping them fix themselves. Punching Isaak whenever he refused to help. He grew closer with Nick—best friends, almost, while Shelby pushes him away.

By the time he’s twenty, he’s gotten used to sporadic calls. Sort of. From calming down his friend from a panic attack to advising his dad on what movies to watch to arguing with Isaak about a Netflix Original, it’s like shutting his eyes and throwing a dart at a board whenever he gets called.

“Sky—Sky, holy fuck,” his dad says before he can even get out a word. Doesn’t even muster up a “hi” before he’s talking again. “Okay, I don’t know how long this call will hold. But, fuck, _shit,_ I need you to promise me a few things, alright? I need—I need you, right here and now, to promise me a few things.”

“What the fuck is going on?” he asks.

“I can’t explain right now—something’s bad. Something’s really, really bad. It’ll probably be on the news soon. Where are you? Nevermind, can you please promise me these things? Tell me you’re going to promise me these things.”

“Okay! Alright! I’ll—I’ll promise you these ‘things.’ But then you have to explain what the hell is going on.”

“If anything happens to me or Natalia or Isaak or—fuck, what was her name again? Anika!—if anything happens to us, you have to find Isaak's kids, your friends, and help them. Please. They're younger then you by a few years, and sure, they can mostly handle themselves but—please, just help them," his dad says, and Sky can hear yelling in the background.

“What?”

His dad—Diego. Diego Cielo—sucks in a breath. “Promise me you’ll find them and you’ll take care of them if anything happens to us. Promise me this—please, Sky, I need to hear you say it. I’m looking for your grandfather right now and, if everything goes to plan, we should all be meeting up with some friends very, very soon. But if it doesn’t I need you to promise me you’re gonna look after them. I know—they’re fucking eighteen. But they’re in high school. They need you. _Promise me._ ”

The line goes dead and Sky thinks he knows what it feels like to be a parent, now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~MONDAY~~  
>  ~~TUESDAY~~  
>  WEDNESDAY  
> THURSDAY  
> FRIDAY  
> SATURDAY  
> SUNDAY  
> LOVE  
> LIFE


End file.
